Ashley Judd Out, A Former Miss America May Challenge Mitch McConnell [View all]

[DonViejo]

by Jonathan Miller May 26, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

Heather French Henry, the 2000 pageant winner and wife of the former Kentucky lt. governor, mulls a run for the U.S. Senate. Jonathan Miller reports.

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It’s no wonder that so few Kentucky women jump into the muddy political ring: Women represent less than 20 percent of the state legislature, only four have ever been elected to statewide office, and we’ve never had a female U.S. Senator. Even as both national parties have furiously recruited women to run in the 2014 midterm elections, the Democratic women who have considered challenging Kentucky’s U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell have faced furious gender-based bashing, some of it from members of their own party.

First out of the gate was the actress Ashley Judd, who was pelleted with smarmy critiques of her film nudity, and whose words were continually taken out of context to make her sound like a radical, unpredictable woman. In reality, many in the Democratic Establishment feared a Judd candidacy, because as the very antithesis of the good-ole-boy club — with direct access to energized grassroots activists and unlimited campaign funds — Judd didn’t need them; and they understood the maxim that you cannot control what you did not create.

When Judd bowed out, the race was supposedly cleared for a “safer” female choice, Secretary of State Alison Grimes, the scion of a well-connected political family. But Grimes’ two months of telegraphed hesitancy, however, have prompted some moneyed interests to pressure her to run instead for Attorney General in 2015.

Should Grimes move down ticket, Miss America stands ready to step in. Heather French Henry, that is, the Northern Kentucky resident who won the famous beauty pageant–ahem, scholarship contest–in 2000, and later married the then-Lt. Governor in a fairy-tale, televised wedding. Henry, who last week announced that she is considering the Senate race, doesn’t fit the beauty-queen stereotype: She is a dynamic, charismatic speaker, boasts Clinton-ian retail politicking skills, and has developed a policy platform that no one dares criticize as a passionate and successful advocate for disabled veterans for more than a decade.

full article
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/26/ashley-judd-out-a-former-miss-america-may-challenge-mitch-mcconnell.html